DOES the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) have a quality control department which is tasked to look into the performance of its various contractors, especially the ones doing its line stringing?
We are asking this question because we have seen their communication lines sagging almost to the ground level in certain areas of Davao City. The telecommunications firm will most likely claim it has monitored the output of its contractors, thus is likely to deny our assertion. But this time the undesirable performance of the contractor is right in front of our rural residence in Talandang, Tugbok District. The sagging communications wires hung very low and are almost touching the tallest steel portion of our gate.
Last Wednesday a delivery truck carrying some heavy household equipment that we transferred from our house in downtown Davao City to the house we are now residing in since the onset of the CoViD 19 pandemic, refused to get inside our compound for fear that the vehicle would hit the sagging lines. Due to our insistence the delivery truck driver attempted to get inside our compound. But he was certain the wires would be hit by the upper portion of the truck and when we could not find a long piece of wood to push the wires upwards, the delivery truck driver just had to plead with us that they just unload the cargo along the road on the side parallel to our residence. We obliged. Hence, we had to endure helping the truck driver and his assistant carry the heavy load from where these were unloaded alongside the road to the inside of our house, a distance of about 20 meters. With the weight of the cargo, it took some time before finally placing the delivered household equipment to where it is usually connected to outlets of the power utility.
Other than being a block to vehicles that need to get inside our compound, we or even those who just come to pay our family a visit, looking at the sagging communication wires is very destructive to the sight.
We hope PLDT can do some quality control monitoring of the work of its contractors doing line stringing. Our place is just a 31-kilometer distance from the city’s downtown and about 6 kilometers away from its Calinan sub-office. After all, doing some tensioning of its lines is not a hell of a job as it is also not very expensive.
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Meanwhile over at our house at Pag-ibig Homes subdivision in Catalunan Grande the situation of the utility service delivery – this time water – still remains the same since over a year ago. Our faucets in the house are still waterless from as early as 8 in the morning to 12 or 1 o’clock in the afternoon. And this is an everyday occurrence, not every now and then.
From the start of the daily water service interruption since March of 2020 the reason that the Davao City Water District (DCWD) communications people give the complaining customers, is that the water utility is doing upgrading of its facilities, specifically its lines from the Tugbok wells complex. Now, after one year and ten months since the daily water outage, it is still the same reason that the water distribution agency is giving the affected water consumers in that part of Catalunan Grande.
Can the DCWD think of another reason that will convince its consumers to believe in what the information people tell them?
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This is indeed a very welcome development for us Filipinos who have been for almost two years literally incapacitated by the CoViD 19 pandemic. Yes, we have been into several serious situations either brought by the actions of some of our scheming government leaders or by the onsets of cataclysmic natural phenomenon. But with the hardships brought about by the health emergency, it is indeed worth celebrating to learn that our own Davao City is one of 23 local governments that have met the targeted 70 percent of its population being vaccinated to get the so-called “herd immunity.”
With this report coming from no less than Secretary of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Eduardo Ano we have no doubt that indeed herd immunity may now be prevailing in Davao City.
The local Vaccination Task force which is overseeing the various inoculation activities in Davao could only thank the strong Public-Private sector partnership in carrying out the government mandate to ensure a successful vaccination program..
Of course credit should not be taken away from Vice Presidential candidate Sara Duterte-Carpio who as mayor of the city, did a yeoman’s job of mobilizing the local front liners.
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